Perfectly Human

Mama,

I find it funny that it's easier for me to write about my loss like this than to text or call individual people and tell them that my mummy is gone.

This death is a different one. It's something I was expecting, yet somehow it's something I wasn't expecting at all. The dichotomy of life.

My mother had not been well for a while, and there were times when I thought, this is it. And yet she would bounce back. So I guess, in a way, I came to see her as Superwoman yet again, because I witnessed her strength again and again.

My relationship with her is complicated, and yet not at all.

I see her as the woman who did her very best to raise her children in the best way she could. She had certain standards that she upheld. She ingrained in us the need to be close, to love one another and to always learn to work things out amongst ourselves.

She gave birth to ten children. Two passed away within months of birth, and two others in adulthood.

I was brought up literally thinking she was perfect. I'll have to go and find something I wrote when I was younger, just so I can see again how perfect I thought she was. Not just perfect in the sense of being perfect for me, but perfect in the sense that I thought every mother should take a leaf out of her book and copy her.

I feel most of us probably worshipped her at some point in our lives.

In fact, she made me believe that all mothers loved their children and wanted the very best for them. I didn't see mothers as women. I saw them as these larger than life goddesses who could do no wrong. EVER.

I guess that is also where the complications come from.

As you grow up, you begin to see the "cracks". You witness human behaviour from someone you once thought was far beyond those things. It takes a while for it to fully sink in because you've had so many years of seeing them in a particular way.

And with those cracks, it can be difficult to fully digest what you're seeing, especially when it hasn't touched you personally. And when it finally does, there are already years and years of stored grace that allow for more grace.

Eventually, I came to understand something different:

This woman was simply the perfect mother for me. The perfect woman I needed in order to become the woman that I am.

She gave me a great foundation that a lot of people didn't have. She was still so perfect to me, but now I could see that she was also perfectly human.

When I think of all that she achieved — raising my siblings and me while being not only the breadwinner but, during my childhood, the only source of income, she owned her own successful business in a male-dominated field — I take my hat off to her.

I don't know if anyone can maintain fully loving, attentive relationships with so many people without someone, somewhere, sometimes feeling left out. But she managed that illusion with me for the longest time. Again, I thank her for that.

And I want to say clearly that this is simply my experience of my life. I can only speak from my point of view. My siblings are their own people and will, of course, have their own experiences.

In fact, I used to joke with my sisters that my mum was the best mum because I had no real complaints about how she was as a mother to me.

To me, she was a warrior for her kids. A king and a queen. A protector who didn't know when to relax and let go. Someone who perhaps didn't always realise that, as we grew up, we needed something different from her.

Yet I understand it.

When you have had to be strong for so long, you don't necessarily know how to let go. Sometimes letting go can be harder than simply continuing to be strong.

Mama, I love and appreciate you.

I know I told you this many times, but I don't think you ever fully believed me, because I couldn't always show it to you in the way you wanted or in a way you could understand.

But I know now you can see it.
I know now you can feel it.

Thank you, Mummy, for the legacy of love you have left behind.
Thank you for showing me how to love.
Thank you for creating the environment that allowed me to become the woman I am today.

Thank you.

✦ ✦ ✦